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Case Study: Ice Cream Web Sites

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 1, 2007 in SEO Case Studies

Disclaimer: Neither Amy’s Ice Creams nor Blue Bell Creameries are clients and I am not proposing that they should become 1st Query clients. Nor is 1st Query endorsing their service and products in any way. I have not asked for permission to reveiw their sites or to discuss them. This is a completely unsolicited review. The SEO suggestions I make are not comprehensive but they are intended only for the sites being reviewed. Implementing similar changes on your own sites may or may not help or hurt your rankings (although I generally strive to share only good, fundamental advice).

Ice Cream - Who Optimizes for Ice Cream?

People do actually search for the expression “ice cream” but they are more likely to search for “ice cream parlours & mobile shops”, “ice cream manufacturers & suppliers”, and “ice cream - equipment & supplies” than they are to search for “ice cream” (your keyword research may differ from my own because of seasonal query changes, different research tools, etc.). I want to look at Web sites for two Texas ice cream manufacturers.

Ice Cream or Ice Cream Manufacturers & Suppliers? It’s a well known fact, I think, that some ice cream manufacturers and suppliers also operate their own ice cream parlours and mobile shops. Ben and Jerries, Amy’s Ice Creams, and Cold Stone Creamery are just three examples. Each such corporation has to decide its own Internet marketing strategy so whether they optimzie for ice cream or ice cream manufacturers and suppliers or ice cream parlours & mobile shops is not relevant to this case study. I’m just going to play a game of “what if” and choose my own priorities.

In my opinion, these companies should be prominently featured for “ice cream manufacturers and suppliers” and “ice cream parlours & mobile shops”. Just glancing at some recent query activity I see that those are more popular expressions. They are also less competitive than “ice cream” but not by much. The ice cream manufacturing industry has clearly been jostling for visibility under their collective trademark product description. But the problem with optimizing for ice cream rather than for secondary expressions (and some companies and sites actually go after the secondary expressions) is that you’re not actually competitively optimizing your Web site.

Single expression optimization is one of the deadliest sins of search engine optimization. Why? Because, in classic Highlander cliche, “there can be only one” — one at the top of the search results, that is. But also because you don’t know which query will be most popular. While it might intuitively seem that more people search for ice cream than search for ice cream manufacturers and suppliers or ice cream parlours and mobile shops, the truth is that when it comes to ice cream people have very specific expressions in mind.

Why, for example, did I choose Amy’s Ice Cream (actually Amy’s Ice Creams) and Blue Bell Ice Cream (actually the company is called Blue Bell Creameries)? Because I lived in Texas for a few years and was familiar with those Texas companies. I have no particular connection to them except memory. Memory is key to marketing success. People look for what they remember. Sure, I’ve eaten Haagen-Daz, Ben & Jerry’s, and Baskin Robbins but I didn’t link to their Web sites from this article. Why? Because I chose to link to Amy’s Ice Creams and Blue Bell Creameries.

Making Memorable Ice Cream Web Sites

Amy’s Ice Creams caught my attention when I was doing research on … well, that’s not important. But something caught my eye when I visited Amy’s Web site (yes, she’s a real person). You see, Amy’s Ice Cream(s) has a history page. I just happen to like reading company histories. Maybe I’ve spent too much time doing research on companies. I don’t know. But a history page is more interesting than a corporate profile page.

The history of an ice cream manufacturer may not seem like the most compelling copy you can think of but if you’re given a choice between writing a page that lists all the flavors of ice cream the company makes and writing a page that explains how Amy Miller Simmons had to choose between becoming a doctor and an ice cream manufacturer, write the history page. You can always drop flavors into the history. It takes a little more skill to drop history into the flavors page AND get the company to approve the mixed copy.

Blue Bell Creameries’ history looks like a snapshot out of … history. Their Our History page is short but includes two cool antique photographs. They could have done more (in fact, they should have done more for a variety of reasons). People like ice cream. People like to make ice cream. History and ice cream go together like, oh, I don’t know — maybe a 100th anniversary of making ice cream. So don’t be shy. Tell people it’s your birthday. Heck, Xenite.Org is only 10 years old and we’re hoopin’ and hollerin’ all over the network (when it’s up and running).

Amy’s Ice Cream(s) also features a photo booth page, which while it may not seem like the most interesting page on an ice cream site, does give her customers a shot at instant fame and glory. She also offers an interesting anecdote about a family photobooth tradition. Besides which, people spend a lot of time on Flickr looking at pictures, so why not on an ice cream Web site?

Engage your customers in your Web site by including ice cream questions and answers and by offering to repay old employees who did not cash checks. How many companies offer money to people who have left? That’s link bait, folks.

Is Amy’s Ice Cream Web site optimized?

When I look at search results for “ice cream” on Google and Yahoo!, I don’t see Amy’s Ice Creams show up in the top ten. She performs better for “ice creams” but queries for “ice cream” are about 10 times more active and many times more abundant than queries for “ice creams”.

The name of the company is “Amy’s Ice Creams” so it’s good that you can find the Web site if you search for it, but if the company wants to be known for “ice cream” it needs to emphasize that expression a little more. For example, in the navigation links the root URL receives anchor text of “home”. Other anchor text includes “news”, “history”, dear amy”, “locations”, and one lone reference to “ice cream”. It’s always a good idea to use your internal navigation to brand your own pages with anchor text. That helps your visitors if nothing else, because they may actually come back to a search engine one day and look for “history of Amy’s Ice Cream” (note that I used the singular, not the plural). Because of on-page factors, Amy’s history page does get into the top 2 positions but should have gotten the 1st position on both pages with just a little extra anchor text (other things could have been done to compensate).

Blue Bell, on the other hand, doesn’t get its history page to show in the top results on either Google or Yahoo! when I search for “history of blue bell ice cream” (note: it comes up 5th after the anniversary page on Google for me). Now, if I were telling someone about that page and wanted to get to it quickly, I would probably try to use a search engine to find it. Why? Because business Web sites tend to be poorly organized and many people do actually use search engines as site navigation tools.

When you know that people are going to use search engines to navigate your site, you should make an effort to ensure that the right page comes up for the right expression. Even with several hundred pages on Xenite.Org, I have ensured that my section header pages (like “Xenite.Org news”, “Xenite.Org sitemap”, “Xenite.Org channels”, “Xenite.Org forums”, “Xenite.Org about us”, etc.) usually come up first for what seems to me the most likely descriptive queries (my guesses won’t always match user queries, of course).

Is Blue Bell Creamery’s Ice Cream site optimized?

Blue Bell’s internal navigation code is not consitent. They mix absolute URLs with at least two different formats for relative URLs. While the crawlers are probably finding all the pages, the loosely coded navigaton is inefficient. And the anchor text, like the anchor text on Amy’s site, is generic, inspecific, and not very helpful.

Both Blue Bell and Amy seem to avoid the use of “ice cream” in their title tags. Most SEOs know to optimize the title tags, but Blue Bell also avoids the use of “ice cream” in its page headers. For example, their new ice cream flavors page is simply titled “new creations” (so I’ve given them some anchor love).

Amy’s Ice Creams actually shows ice cream flavors in the title tag but then uses a graphic for the header.

Despite these errors, Blue Bell still manages to finish in the top ten on Yahoo! for “ice cream”, so they can’t be complaining a great deal. But the fact that they do show up in the top ten for “ice cream” obligates them to provide clear guidance to the content which is most relevant to that query. It’s not only in their best interest to show their visitors where the actual “ice cream” content is, it builds their credibility. People will often use several variations on a query to find just what they are looking for. They’ll tend to avoid sites that repeatedly fail to offer the right answer.

Blue Bell’s internal navigation groups most of their actual ice cream content under the section of “What we’re crankin’ out”. While that seems down-homey and Texas-like, it doesn’t tell people directly that there are ice cream pages under that section. Rule of thumb: If’n you’re not tellin’ your visitors where to find your ice cream content, you’re not tellin’ the search engines where to find it, either.

How well does Blue Bell rank for Ice Creamery?

Blue bell barely gets into the top 10 for “ice creamery” on Yahoo!. They are nowhere in sight on Google, and many if not all the title tags on their site say “Blue Bell Creamery” (even though the name of the company is “Blue Bell Creameries”). The confusion on Blue Bell’s site over its own name doesn’t help its situation in industry-specific keywords (which is probably just as well because most people associate “creamery” with just one ice cream manufacturer).

When a company operates under more than one name (often referred to as DBAs, or Doing Business As names) it behooves that company to be found for each of the DBA names. There should not be an SEO preference for any one name over the others. It’s imperative to be found for all the DBAs (preferably to be found first). It’s also a good idea to be found for portions of those DBAs that may be used as generic queries (keeping in mind that the fewer the words in the expression, the more rare they should be in order for the shorter, generic query to be of value).

Where can I find ice cream?

The branding issues aside, location is also important. People may be in Austin and want to find an ice cream parlour. So if they search for “Austin ice cream” Amy’s Ice Creams does a good job of showing up. But if you search for “Texas ice cream” where is Blue Bell? Amy has done a good job of optimizing for “Texas ice cream” but Blue Bell is being creamed in its own home state. Texans may love Amy’s Ice Creams but I know for a fact they love Blue Bell, too, and Texas pride demands that Amy and Blue Bell be battlin’ it out in the SERPs for control over “Texas ice cream”. So what if no one searches for it. Be there when it’s time for the great state of Texas to start telling the rest of the nation where the best ice cream is found.

In fact, don’t wait for the Texas Dept. of Commerce to do your job for you, Blue Bell. Start telling your customers and visitors that your company offers a great “Texas ice cream”. Talk about the tradition of “Texas ice cream”. Create the query. Build the traffic. Be there for people when they go searching for “Texas ice cream” and “ice cream in Texas” and “Texas ice cream manufacturers”. Don’t depend on Ickipedia and phone directory sites to do your marketing for you.

My last word on Texas Ice Cream Manufacturers

I could easily find many queries where Amy and Blue Bell perform well. Both sites offer a lot of content, but simply providing content is not sufficient. In search engine optimization you have to manage the long tail queries rather than depend on them to bring in your search traffic. You need to optimize for multiple expressions and build out your content for those expressions.

It’s not just about sharing information with people who manage to find you, it’s about sharing information with people who are looking to find sites like your own. Search engine optimization can easily help companies achieve visibility for many relevant, active queries that bring in additional traffic. But it’s a bold move to reach out for multiple expressions. Many companies lack the courage and vision to do what is best for their own search success. The SEO may have to devise more than one backup plan in order to build out content properly.

But that’s a topic for another day.